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THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 




JOHN RUSKIN 

An apostle of the holiness of beauty, whose high ideals were 
largely influential in forming modern standards of art. 






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Copyright, iqoq. 
By Rand McNally & Co. 



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The acknowledged classics of English literature are many, 
and the number of those works which are worthy of being 
ranked among the classics grows from year to year. Whoso- 
ever would know the best that has been written in our tongue, 
can scarcely begin his acquaintance too soon in his own life 
after he has learned to read. Nor can he be too careful 
about the new members he admits to the circle of his book 
friendships. 

The gardener may have prepared his ground with scrupu- 
lous and rigid care, but unless he follows his planting with 
unremitting vigilance, the labor of preparation will have been 
in vain. A few days of neglect and the garden will be 
smothered in weeds. Profitable knowledge of the best in our 
literature must be sought with like vigilance and patience. 
The taste for it should be implanted early and when estab- 
lished must be cultivated and maintained with constancy. 
.It should also be intelligently adapted to increasing years 
and widening experience. 

The first few books in the Golden Classics have been 
chosen as the foundation for a permanent and more extended 
series. They have been taken from the writings of acknowl- 
edged Masters of the English tongue. Among these immor- 
tals are Irving, Dickens, Ruskin, Longfellow, and Goldsmith; 
no names in English literature are more beloved and honored. 

More vital even than their great worth as literature, these 
selections have, in eminent degree, that wonderful quality of 
the works of human genius which stimulates the imagination 
of the reader, refines his taste, broadens and deepens his love 
of letters, inspires him with generous sympathy for all that is 
uplifting, and quickens his aversion toward all that is trashy 
or in any way unworthy. 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES 



It is true in literature as it is in money that the truest 
capacity to detect the counterfeit is intimate, familiar knowl- 
edge of the genuine. It is not enough merely to know that 
there are works in our literature which have proven their 
immortal, classic quality, but equally as important to be able 
to name some or all of them. It is not enough even to be 
able to say that one has read them. They must be, so to 
speak, mentally absorbed. They must sink deep into and be 
assimilated by our intellectual life, and so become a part of 
our being. By just so much as any generation accomplishes 
this, and makes itself affectionately familiar with all that is 
possible of that literature which has crystallized into immor- 
tality; by just so much it has raised the plane on which the 
next generation must begin its career, and thus has contribu- 
ted toward the uplifting evolution of humanity. 

These Golden Classics are meant to put the means ^ of 
risiDg to this plane within easy reach; opening a path which 
every aspiring reader may follow in full confidence that he 
will not be led astray. 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 
AND ITS ARTS 

Lecture delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Science, 
Dublin, 1868. 

WHEN I accepted the privilege of addressing you 
to-day, I was not aware of a restriction with 
respect to the topics of discussion which may be 
brought before the Society* — a restriction which, though 
entirely wise and right under the circumstances contem- 
plated in its introduction, would necessarily have disabled 
me, thinking as I think, from preparing any lecture for 
you on the subject of art in a form which might be per- 
manently useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I 
must transgress such limitation; for indeed my infringe- 
ment will be of the letter — not of the spirit — of your 
commands. In whatever I may say touching the religion 
which has been the foundation of art, or the policy which 
has contributed to its power, if I offend one, I shall offend 
all: for I shall take no note of any separations in creeds, 
or antagonisms in parties: neither do I fear that ulti- 
mately I shall offend any, by proving — or at least stating 
as capable of positive proof — the connection of all that 
is best in the crafts and arts of man, with the simplicity 
of his faith, and the sincerity of his patriotism. 

But I speak to you under another disadvantage, by 
which I am checked in frankness of utterance, not here 
only, but everywhere; namely, that I am never fully 
aware how far my audiences are disposed to give me 
credit for real knowledge of my subject, or how far they 
grant me attention only because I have been sometimes 

* That Qo reference should be made to religious questions. 
(11) 



12 JOHN RUSKIN 



thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist upon it. For 
I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the 
misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; 
not without a fooHsh vanity in the poor knack that I had 
of doing so; until I was heavily pimished for this pride, 
by finding that many people thought of the words only, 
and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, 
the power of using such pleasant language — if indeed 
it ever were mine— is passing away from me ; and whatever 
I am now able to say at all, I find myself forced to say 
with great plainness. For my thoughts have changed 
also, as my words have; and whereas in earlier Ufe, what 
Httle influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to the 
enthusiasm with which I was able to dwell on the beauty 
of the physical clouds, and of their colours in the sky; so 
all the influence I now desire to retain must be due to the 
earnestness with which I am endeavouring to trace the 
form and beauty of another kind of cloud than those; 
the bright cloud, of which it is written — 

''What is your life? It is even as a vapour that appeareth 
for a little time, and then vanisheth away." 

I suppose few people reach the middle or latter period 
of their age, without having, at some moment of change or 
disappointment, felt the truth of those bitter words; and 
been startled by the fading of the sunshine from the cloud 
of their Hfe, into the sudden agony of the knowledge that 
the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the endurance 
of it as transient as the dew. But it is not always that, 
even at such times of melancholy surprise, we can enter 
into any true perception that this human life shares, in the 
nature of it, not only the evanescence, but the mystery of 
the cloud; that its avenues are wreathed in darkness, and 
its forms and courses no less fantastic, than spectral and 
obscure; so that not only in the vanity which we cannot 
grasp, but in the shadow which we cannot pierce, it is true 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 13 

of this cloudy life of ours, that ''man walketh in a vain 
shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain." 

And least of all, whatever may have been the eagerness 
of our passions, or the height of our pride, are we able to 
understand in its depth the third and most solemn char- 
acter in which our Hf e is hke those clouds of heaven ; that 
to it belongs not only their transcience, not only their mys- 
tery, but also their power; that in the cloud of the human 
soul there is a fire stronger than the lightning, and a grace 
more precious than the rain ; and that though of the good 
and evil it shall one day be said alike, that the place that 
knew them knows them no more, there is an infinite separa- 
tion between those whose brief presence had there been a 
blessing, hke the mist of Eden that went up from the 
earth to water the garden, and those whose place knew 
them only as a drifting and changeful shade, of whom the 
heavenly sentence is, that they are "wells without water; 
clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist 
of darkness is reserved for ever?'! 

To those among us, however, who have lived long enough 
to form some just estimate of the rate of the changes which 
are, hour by hour in accelerating catastrophe, manifesting 
themselves in the laws, the arts, and the creeds of men, 
it seems to me, that now at least, if never at any former 
time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its 
powers and responsibilities, should present themselves with 
absolute sadness and sternness. 

And although I know that this feehng is much deepened 
in my own mind by disappointment, which, by chance, has 
attended the greater number of my cherished purposes, I 
do not for that reason distrust the feeling itself, though I 
am on my guard against an exaggerated degree of it: nay, 
I rather beHeve that in periods of new effort and violent 
change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine; and 
that in the secret of it, as in the twihght so beloved by 



14 JOHN RUSKIN 



Titian, we may see the colours of things with deeper truth 
than in the most dazzHng sunshine. And because these 
truths about the works of men, which I want to bring to-day 
before you, are most of them sad ones, though at the same 
time helpful and because also I beheve that your kind 
Irish hearts will answer more gladly to the truthful ex- 
pression of a personal feehng, than to the exposition of an 
abstract principle, I will permit myself so much unreserved 
speaking of my own causes of regret, as may enable you 
to make just allowance for what, according to your sym- 
pathies, you will call either the bitterness, or the insight, 
of a mind which has surrendered its best hopes, and been 
foiled in its favourite aims. 

I spent the ten strongest years of my Hfe, (from twenty 
to thirty,) in endeavouring to show the excellence of the 
work of the man whom I beheved, and rightly beheved, 
to be the greatest painter of the schools of England since 
Reynolds. I had the perfect faith in the power of every 
great truth or beauty to prevail ultimately, and take its 
right place in usefulness and honour; and I strove to bring 
the painter's work into this due place, while the painter 
was yet ahve. But he knew, better than I, the uselessness 
of talking about what people could not see for themselves. 
He always discouraged me scornfully, even when he thanked 
me— and he died before even the superficial effect of my 
work was visible. I went on, however, thinking I could 
at least be of use to the pubhc, if not to him, in proving his 
power. My books got talked about a httle. The prices 
of modern pictures, generally, rose, and I was beginning to 
take some pleasure in a sense of gradual victory, when, 
fortunately or unfortunately, an opportunity of perfect 
trial undeceived me at once, and for ever. The Trustees 
of the National Gallery commissioned me to arrange the 
Turner drawings there, and permitted me to prepare three 
hundred examples of his studies from nature, for exhibition 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 15 

at Kensington. At Kensington they were and are, placed 
for exhibition; but they are not exhibited, for the room 
in which they hang is always empty. 

Well — this showed me at once, that those ten years of 
my life had been, in their chief purpose, lost. For that, I 
did not so much care; I had, at least, learned my own busi- 
ness thoroughly, and should be able, as I fondly supposed, 
after such a lesson, now to use my knowledge with better 
effect. But what I did care for, was the — to me frightful 
— discovery, that the most splendid genius in the arts 
might be permitted by Providence to labour and perish 
uselessly; that in the very fineness of it there might be 
something rendering it invisible to ordinary eyes; but, 
that with this strange excellence, faults might be mingled 
which would be as deadly as its virtues were vain ; that the 
glory of it was perishable, as well as invisible, and the gift 
and grace of it might be to us, as snow in summer, and as 
rain in harvest. 

That was the first mystery of Ufe to me. But, while 
my best energy was given to the study of painting, I had 
put collateral effort, more prudent, if less enthusiastic, into 
that of architecture; and in this I could not complain of 
meeting with no sympathy. Among several personal 
reasons which caused me to desire that I might give this 
my closing lecture on the subject of art here, in Ireland, 
one of the chief was, that in reading it, I should stand near 
the beautiful building, — the engineers' school of your 
college, — which was the first realization I had the joy to 
see, of the principles I had, until then, been endeavouring 
to teach; but which alas, is now, to me, no more than the 
richly canopied monument of one of the most earnest 
souls that ever gave itself to the arts, and one of my truest 
and most loving friends, Benjamin Woodward. Nor was 
it here in Ireland only that I received the help of Irish 
sympathy and genius. When, to another friend, Sir 



16 JOHN RUSKIN 



Thomas Deane, with Mr. Woodward, was entrusted the 
building of the museum at Oxford, the best details of the 
work were executed by sculptors who had been born and 
trained here; and the first window of the facade of the 
building, in which was inaugurated the study of natural 
science in England, in true fellowship with Uterature, was 
carved from my design by an Irish sculptor. 

You may perhaps think that no man ought to speak 
of disappointment, to whom, even in one branch of labour, 
so much success was granted. Had Mr. Woodward now 
been beside me, I had not so spoken; but his gentle and 
passionate spirit was cut off from the fulfilment of its pur- 
poses, and the work we did together is now become vain. 
It may not be so in future; but the architecture we en- 
deavoured to introduce is inconsistent alike with the 
reckless luxury, the deforming mechanism, and the squahd 
misery of modern cities; among the formative fashions of 
the day, aided, especially in England, by ecclesiastical 
sentiment, it indeed obtained notoriety; and sometimes 
behind an engine furnace, or a railroad bank, you may 
detect the pathetic discord of its momentary grace, and, 
with toil, decipher its floral carvings choked with soot. I 
felt answerable to the schools I loved, only for their injury. 
I perceived that this new portion of my strength had also 
been spent in vain; and from amidst streets of iron, and 
palaces of crystal, shrank back at last to the carving of the 
mountain and colour of the flower. 

And still I could tell of failure, and failure repeated as 
years went on; but I have trespassed enough on your 
patience to show you, in part, the causes of my discourage- 
ment. Now let me more dehberately tell you its results. 
You know there is a tendency in the minds of many men, 
when they are heavily disappointed in the main purposes 
of their Hfe, to feel, and perhaps in warning, perhaps in 
paockery, to declare, that life itself is a vanity. Because it 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 17 

has disappointed them, they think its nature is of dis- 
appointment always, or at best, of pleasure that can be 
grasped by imagination only; that the cloud of it has no 
strength nor fire within ; but is a painted cloud only, to be 
delighted in, yet despised. You know how beautifully 
Pope has expressed this particular phase of thought: — 

"Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays, 
These painted clouds that beautify our days; 
Each want of happiness by hope supplied. 
And each vacuity of sense, by pride. 

Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy; 
In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble joy. 
One pleasure past, another still we gain 
And not a vanity is given in vain." 

But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been just the 
reverse of this. The more that my Hfe disappointed me, 
the more solemn and wonderful it became to me. It 
seemed, contrarily to Pope's saying, that the vanity of it 
was indeed given in vain; but that there was something 
behind the veil of it, which was not vanity. It became to 
me not a painted cloud, but a terrible and impenetrable 
one: not a mirage, which vanished as I drew near, but a 
pillar of darkness, to which I was forbidden to draw near. 
For I saw that both my own failure, and such success in 
petty things as in its poor triumph seemed to me worse 
than failure, came from the want of sufficiently earnest 
effort to understand the whole law and meaning of exis- 
tence, and to bring it to noble and due end; as, on the 
other hand, I saw more and more clearly that all enduring 
success in the arts, or in any other occupation, had come 
from the rufing of lower purposes, not by a conviction of 
their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in the advancing 
power of human nature, or in the promise, however dimly 
apprehended, that the mortal part of it would one day be 



18 JOHN RUSKIN 



swallowed up in immortality; and that, indeed, the arts 
themselves never had reached any vital strength or honour 
but in the effort to proclaim this immortahty, and in the 
service either of great and just religion, or of some unselfish 
patriotism, and law of such national life as must be the 
foundation of rehgion. 

Nothing that I have ever said is more true or necessary 
— nothing has been more misunderstood or misapplied — 
than my strong assertion,' that the arts can never be right 
themselves, unless their motive is right/ It is misunder- 
stood this way: weak painters, who have never learned 
their business, and cannot lay a true line, continually 
come to me, crying out — "Look at this picture of mine; it 
must be good, I had such a lovely motive. I have put my 
whole heart into it, and taken years to think over its 
treatment." Well, the only answer for these people is — 
— if one had the cruelty to make it — ''Sir, you cannot 
think over anything in any number of years, — you haven't 
the head to do it ; and though you had fine motives, strong 
enough to make you burn yourself in a slow fire, if only 
first you could paint a picture, you can't paint one, nor 
half an inch of one; you haven't the hand to do it." 

But, far more decisively we have to say to the men who 
do know their business, or may know it if they choose — 
' ''Sir, you have this gift and a mighty one; see that you 
serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a greater trust 
than ships and armies: you might cast them away, if you 
were their captain, with less treason to your people than in 
casting your own glorious power away, and serving the 
devil with it instead of men. Ships and armies you may 
replace if they are lost, but a great intellect, once abused 
is a curse to the earth for ever."v • 

This, then, I meant by saying that the arts must have 
noble motives. This also I said respecting them, that they 
never had prospered, nor could prosper, but when they had 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 19 

such true purpose, and were devoted to the proclamation of 
divine truth or law. And yet I saw also that they had 
always failed in this proclamation — that poetry, and sculp- 
ture, and painting, though only great when they strove to 
teach us something about the gods, never had taught us 
anything trustworthy about the gods, but had always 
betrayed their trust in the crisis of it^ and, with their powers 
at the full reach, became ministers to pride and to lust. 
And I felt also, with increasing amazement, the uncon- 
querable apathy in ourselves the hearers, no less than in 
these the teachers; and that, while the wisdom and right- 
ness of every act and art of life could only be consistent 
with a right understanding of the ends of life, we were all 
plunged as in a languid dream — our heart fat, and our 
eyes heavy, and our ears closed, lest the inspiration of 
hand or voice should reach us — lest we should see with our 
eyes, and understand with our hearts, and be healed. 

This intense apathy in all of us is the first great mys- 
tery of life; it stands in the way of every perception, every 
virtue. There is no making ourselves feel enough astonish- 
ment at it. That the occupations or pastimes of life 
should have no motive, is understandable; but ---That life 
itself should have no motive — that we neither care to find 
out what it may lead to, nor to guard against its being for- 
ever taken away from us — here is a mystery indeed. For, 
just suppose I were able to call at this moment to any one 
in this audience by name, and to tell him positively that 1 
knew a large estate had been lately left to him on some 
curious conditions ; but that, though I knew it was large, I 
did not know how large, nor even where it was — whether 
in the East Indies or the West, or in England, or at the 
Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast estate, and that 
there was a chance of his losing it altogether if he did not 
soon find out on what terms it had been left to him. Sup- 
pose I were able to say this positively to any single 



20 JOHN RUSKIN 



man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak 
without warrant, do you think that he would rest content 
with that vague knowledge, if it were anywise possible to 
obtain more? Would he not give every energy to find 
some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had ascer- 
tained where this place was, and what it was hke? And 
suppose he were a young man, and all he could discover 
by his best endeavour was, that the estate was never to be 
at all unless he persevered, during certain years of pro- 
bation, in an orderly and industrious Hfe; but that, accord- 
ing to the rightness of his conduct, the portion of the 
estate assigned to him would be greater or less, so that it 
literally depended on his behaviour from day to day, 
whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty thousand a 
year, or nothing whatever — would you not think it strange 
if the youth never troubled himself to satisfy the conditions 
in any way, nor even to know what was required of him, 
but lived exactly as he chose, and never inquired whether 
his chances of the estate were increasing or passing away? 
Well, you know that this is actually and Hterally so with 
the greater number of the educated persons now living in 
Christian countries. Nearly every man and woman, in 
any company such as this, outwardly professes to believe 
— and a large number unquestionably think they believe — 
much more than this; not only that a quite unlimited 
estate is in prospect for them if they please the Holder of 
it, but that the infinite contrary of such a possession — an 
estate of perpetual misery, is in store for them if they dis- 
please this great Land-Holder, this great Heaven-Holder. 
And yet there is not one in a thousand of these human 
souls that cares to think, for ten minutes of the day, where 
this estate is, or how beautiful it is, or what kind of life 
they are to lead in it, or what kind of life they must lead 
to obtain it. 

You fancy that you care to know this: so little do you 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 21 



care, that, probably, at this moment many of you are 
displeased with me for talking of the matter! You came 
to hear about the Art of this world, not about the Life of 
the next, and you are provoked with me for talking of what 
you can hear any Sunday in church. But do not be 
afraid. I will tell you something before you go about 
pictures, and carvings, and pottery, and what else you 
would hke better to hear of than the other world. Nay 
perhaps you say, ''We want you to talk of pictures and 
pottery, because we are sure that you know something of 
them, and you know nothing of the other world." Well— 
I don't. That is quite true. But the very strangeness 
and mystery of which I urge you to take notice is in this— 
that I do not;— nor you either. Can you answer a single 
bold question unflinchingly about that other world— Are 
you sure there is a heaven? Sure there is a hell? Sure 
that men are dropping before your faces through the 
pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or sure that 
they are not? Sure that at your own death you are going 
to be dehvered from all sorrow, to be endowed with all 
virtue, to be gifted with all feUcity, and raised into per- 
petual companionship with a King, compared to whom 
the kings of the earth are as grasshoppers and the nations 
as the dust of His feet? Are you sure of this? or, if not 
sure, do any of us so much as care to make it sure? and, 
if not, how can anything that we do be right— how can 
anything we think be wise ; what honour can there be in 
the arts that amuse us, or what profit in the possessions 
that please? 

Is not this a mystery of hfe? 

But farther, you may, perhaps, think it a beneficent 
ordinance for the generality of men that they do not, with 
earnestness or anxiety, dwell on such questions of the 
future; because the business of the day could not be done 
if this kind of thought were taken by all of us for the 



22 JOHN RUSKIN 



morrow. Be it so : but at least we might anticipate that 
the greatest and wisest of us, who are evidently the ap- 
pointed teachers of the rest, would set themselves apart 
to seek out whatever could be surely known of the future 
destinies of their race; and to teach this in no rhetorical 
or ambiguous manner, but in the plainest and most severely 
earnest words. 

Now the highest representatives of men who have thus 
endeavoured, during the Christian era, to search out these 
deep things, and relate them, are Dante and Milton. 
There are none who for earnestness of thought, for mastery 
of word, can be classed with these. I am not at present, 
mind you, speaking of persons set apart in any priestly or 
pastoral office, to dehver creeds to us, or doctrines ; but of 
men who try to discover and set forth, as far as by human 
intellect is possible, the facts of the other world. Divines 
may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but only these 
two poets have in any powerful manner striven to dis- 
cover, or in any definite words professed to tell, what we 
shall see and become there: or how those upper and 
nether worlds are, and have been, inhabited? 

And what have they told us? Milton's account of the 
most important event in his whole system of the universe, 
the fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable to himself; 
and the more so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a 
great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account of 
the decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. 
The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which 
every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously em- 
ployed, not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived as 
tenable by any living faith. Dante's conception is far 
more intense, and, by himself, for the time, not to be escaped 
from; it is indeed a vision, but a vision only, and that one 
of the wildest that ever entranced a soul — a dream in 
which every grotesque type or phantasy of heathen 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 23 



tradition is renewed, and adorned; and the destinies of the 
Christian Church, under their most sacred symbols, become 
nterally subordinate to the praise, and are only to be 
understood by the aid, of one dear Florentine maiden. 
^ I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange 
lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the meaning 
and power of life, it seems daily more amazing to me that 
men such as these should dare to play with the most pre- 
cious truths (or the most deadly untruths), by which the 
whole human race listening to them could be informed, or 
deceived;^— all the world their audiences for ever, with 
pleased ear, and passionate heart;— and yet, to this sub- 
missive infinitude of souls, and evermore succeeding and 
succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they do 
but play upon sweetly modulated pipes; with pompous 
nomenclature adorn the councils of hell; touch a trouba- 
dour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and fill the open- 
ings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their 
faces, and which angels desire to look into, with idle 
puppets of their scholastic imagination, and melancholy 
fights of frantic faith in their lost mortal love. 
Is not this a mystery of fife? 

But more. We have to remember that these two great 
teachers were both of them warped in their temper, and 
thwarted in their search for truth. They were men of 
intefiectual war, unable, through darkness of controversy, 
or stress of personal grief, to discern where their own 
ambition modified their utterances of the moral law; or 
their own agony mingled with their anger at its violation. 
But greater men than these have been— innocent-hearted 
—too great for contest. Men, fike Homer and Shakespeare, 
of so unrecognized personafity, that it disappears in future 
ages, and becomes ghostly, fike the tradition of a lost 
heathen god. Men, therefore, to whose unoffended, 
uncondemning sight, the whole of human nature reveals 



24 JOHN RUSKIN 



itself in a pathetic weakness, with which they will not 
strive; or in mournful and transitory strength, which 
they dare not praise. And all Pagan and Christian 
civilization thus becomes subject to them. It does not 
matter how httle, or how much, any of us have read, 
either of Homer or Shakespeare: everything round us, in 
substance, or in thought, has been moulded by them. All 
Greek gentlemen were educated under Homer. All 
Roman gentlemen, by Greek hterature. All ItaUan, 
and French, and Enghsh gentlemen, by Roman literature, 
and by its principles. Of the scope of Shakespeare, I will 
say only, that the intellectual measure of every man since 
born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned 
to him, according to the degree in which he has been 
taught by Shakespeare. Well, what do these two men, 
centres of moral intelhgence, dehver to us of conviction 
respecting what it most behoves that intelligence to grasp? 
What is their hope; their crown of rejoicing? what 
manner of exhortation have they for us, or of rebuke? 
what hes next their own hearts, and dictates their undying 
words? Have they any peace to promise to our unrest — 
any redemption to our misery? 

Take Homer first, and think if there is any sadder 
image of human fate than the great Homeric story. The 
main features in the character of Achilles are its intense 
desire of justice, and its tenderness of affection. And in 
that bitter song of the Iliad, this man, though aided con- 
tinually by the wisest of the gods, and burning with the 
desire of justice in his heart, becomes yet, through ill- 
governed passion, the most unjust of men: and, full of the 
deepest tenderness in his heart, becomes yet, through 
ill-governed passion, the most cruel of men. Intense 
aUke in love and in friendship, he loses, first his mistress, 
and then his friend ; for the sake of the one, he surrenders 
to death the armies of his own land; for the sake of the 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 25 

other, he surrenders all. Will a man lay down his life for 
his friend? Yea — even for his dead friend, this Achilles, 
though goddess-born, and goddess-taught, gives up his 
kingdom, his country, and his life — casts alike the innocent 
and guilty, with himself, into one gulf of slaughter, and 
dies at last by the hand of the basest of his adversaries. 

Is not this a mystery of hfe? 

But what, then, is the message to us of our own poet, 
and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Chris- 
tian faith have been numbered over the graves of men? 
Are his words more cheerful than the heathen's — is his 
hope more near — his trust more sure — his reading of fate 
more happy? Ah, no! He differs from the Heathen poet 
chiefly in this — that he recognizes, for deliverance, no 
gods nigh at hand; and that, by petty chance — by momen- 
tary folly — b}^ broken message — by fool's tyranny — or 
traitor's snare, the strongest and most righteous are 
brought to their ruin, and perish without word of hope. 
He indeed, as part of his rendering of character, ascribes 
the power and modesty of habitual devotion, to the gentle 
and the just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright with 
vision of angels; and the great soldier-king, standing by 
his few dead, acknowledges the presence of the hand that 
can save alike by many or by few. But observe that from 
those who with deepest spirit, meditate, and with deepest 
passion, mourn, there are no such words as these; nor in 
their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the 
perpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, 
through all heathen tradition, is the source of heroic 
strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the 
shadow of death, we find only in the great Christian poet, 
the consciousness of a moral law, through which ^^the gods 
are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to 
scourge us;" and of the resolved arbitration of the 
destinies, that conclude into precision of doom what we 



26 JOHN RUSKIN 



feebly and blindly began; and force us, when our indis- 
cretion serves us, and our deepest plots do pall, to the 
confession,. that ''there's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
rough hew them how we will." 

Is not this a mystery of Hfe? 

Be it so then. About this human hfe that is to be, or 
that is, the wise religious men tell us nothing that we can 
trust; and the wise contemplative men, nothing that can 
give us peace. But there is yet a third class, to whom we 
may turn — the wise practical men. We have sat at the 
feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they have told us 
their dreams. We have Hstened to the poets who sang of 
earth, and they have chanted to us dirges, and w^ords of 
despair. But there is one class of men more: — men, not 
capable of vision, nor sensitive to sorrow, but firm of pur- 
pose — practised in business: learned in all that can be, 
(by handling, — ) known. Men whose hearts and hopes 
are wholly in this present world, from whom, therefore, 
we may surely learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently 
to live in it. What will they say to us, or show us by ex- 
ample? These kings — these councillors — these statesmen 
and builders of kingdoms — these capitalists and men of 
business who weigh the earth, and the dust of it, in a 
balance. They know the world, surely; and what is the 
mystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely 
show us how to Hve, while we Hve, and to gather out of 
the present world what is best. 

I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling you 
a dream I had once. For though I am no poet, I have 
dreams sometimes: — I dreamed I was at a child's May-day 
party, in which every means of entertainment had been pro- 
vided for them, by a wise and kind host. It was in a 
stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it; and 
the children had been set free in the rooms and gardens, 
with no care whatever but how to pass their afternoon 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 27 

rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know much about 
what was to happen next day; and some of them, I thought, 
were a httle frightened, because there was a chance of 
their being sent to a new school where there were exami- 
nations; but they kept the thoughts of that out of their 
heads as well as they could, and resolved to enjoy them- 
selves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful garden, 
and in the garden were all kinds of flowers; sweet grassy 
banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and pleasant 
streams and woods; and rocky places for climbing. And 
the children were happy for a little while, but presently 
they separated themselves into parties; and then each 
party declared, it would have a piece of the garden for its 
own, and that none of the others should have anything to 
do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently, 
which pieces they would have; and at last the boys took 
up the thing, as boys should do, ''practically," and fought 
in the flower-beds till there was hardly a flower left stand- 
ing; then they trampled down each other's bits of the gar- 
den out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no 
more; and so they all lay down at last breathless in the 
ruin, and waited for the time when they were to be taken 
home in the evening.* 

Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making 
themselves happy also in their manner. For them, there 
had been provided every kind of in-doors pleasure: there 
was music for them to dance to; and the library was open, 
with all manner of amusing books; and there was a 
museum, full of the most curious shells, and animals, and 
birds; and there was a workshop, with lathes and carpen- 
ter's tools, for the ingenious boys; and there were pretty 
fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress in; and there were 

* I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to 
set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what 
follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth. 



28 JOHN RUSKIN 



microscopes, and kaleidoscopes; and whatever toys a 
child could fancy; and a table, in the dining-room, loaded 
with everything nice to eat. 

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the 
more ''practical" children, that they would like some of the 
brass-headed nails that studded the chairs; and so they 
set to work to pull them out. Presently, the others, who 
were reading, or looking at shells, took a fancy to do the 
Hke; and, in a little while, all the children nearly, were 
spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headed nails. 
With all that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; 
and then, everybody wanted some of somebody else's. 
And at last the really practical and sensible ones declared, 
that nothing was of any real consequence, that afternoon, 
except to get plenty of brass-headed nails ; and that the 
books, and the cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at 
all in themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged for 
nail-heads. And, at last they began to fight for nail-heads, 
as the others fought for the bits of garden. Only here and 
there, a despised one shrank away into a corner, and tried 
to get a little quiet with a book, in the midst of the noise; 
but all the practical ones thought of nothing else but 
counting nail-heads all the afternoon — even though they 
knew they would not be allowed to carry so much as one 
brass knob away with them. But no — it was — ''who has 
most nails? I have a hundred, and you have fifty; or, I 
have a thousand and you have two. I must have as many 
as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go 
home in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I 
awoke, and thought to myself, "What a false dream that is, 
of children." The child is the father of the man; and 
wiser. Children never do such fooHsh things. Only men 
do. 

But there is yet one last class of persons to be interro- 
gated. The wise religious men we have asked in vain ; the 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 29 

wise contemplative men, in vain; the wise worldly men, in 
vain. But there is another group yet. In the midst of 
this vanity of empty rehgion — of tragic contemplation — 
of wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute for dust, 
there is yet one great group of persons, by whom all these 
disputers Hve — the persons who have determined, or have 
had it by a beneficent Providence determined for them, 
that they will do something useful; that whatever may be 
prepared for them hereafter, or happen to them here, they 
will, at least, deserve the food that God gives them by win- 
ning it honourably; and that, however fallen from the 
purity, or far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry out 
the duty of human dominion, though they have lost its 
fehcity; and dress and keep the wilderness, though they 
no more can dress or keep the garden. 

These, — hewers of wood, and drawers of water — these 
bent under burdens, or torn of scourges — these, that dig 
and weave — that plant and build; workers in wood, and 
in marble, and in iron — by whom all food, clothing, habi- 
tation, furniture, and means of dehght are produced, for 
themselves, and for all men beside; men, whose deeds are 
good, though their words may be few; men, whose lives 
are serviceable, be they never so short, and worthy of hon- 
our, be they never so humble; — from these, surely at least, 
we may receive some clear message of teaching: and pierce, 
for an instant, into the mystery of life, and of its arts. 

Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But 
I grieve to say, or rather — for that is the deeper truth of 
the matter — I rejoice to say — this message of theirs can 
only be received by joining them — not by thinking about 
them. 

You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed 
you in coming. But the main thing I have to tell you is, — 
that art must not be talked about. The fact that there is 
talk about it all, signifies that it is ill done, or cannot be 



30 JOHN RUSKIN 



done. No true painter ever speaks, or ever has spoken, 
much of his art. The greatest speak nothing. Even 
Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of all that he could 
not himself do, and was utterly silent respecting all that 
he himself did. 

"^ The moment a man can really do his work, he becomes 
speechless about it. All words become idle to him — all 
theories. 

Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or 
boast of it when built? All good work is essentially done 
that way — without hesitation, without difficulty, without 
boasting; and in the doers of the best, there is an inner 
and involuntary power which approximates Hterally to the 
instinct of an animal — nay, I am certain that in the most 
perfect human artists, reason does not supersede instinct, 
but is added to an instinct as much more divine than that 
of the lower animals as the human body is more beautiful 
than theirs ; that a great singer sings not with less instinct 
than the nightingale, but with more — only more various, 
apphcable, and governable; that a great architect does 
not build with less instinct than the beaver or the bee, but 
with more — with an innate cunning of proportion that 
embraces all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that 
improvises all construction. But be that as it may — be 
the instinct less or more than that of inferior animals — 
like or unlike theirs, still the human art is dependent on 
that first, and then upon an amount of practice, of science, 
— and of imagination discipUned by thought, which the 
true possessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the 
true critic of it, inexplicable, except through long process 
of laborious years. That journey of hfe's conquest, in 
which hills over hills, and Alps on Alps arose, and sank, — 
do you think you can make another trace it painlessly, by 
talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up an Alp, 
by talking. You can guide us up it, step by step, no 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 31 

otherwise — even so, best silently. You girls, who have been 
among the hills, know how*'the bad guide chatters and 
gesticulates, and it is ''put your foot here," and ''mind 
how you balance yourself there;" but the good guide walks 
on quietly, without a word, only with his eyes on you 
when need is, and his arm like an iron bar, if need be." 

In that slow way, also, art can be taught — if you have 
faith in your guide, and will let his arm be to you as an 
iron bar when need is. But in what teacher of art have 
you such faith? Certainly not in me; for, as I told you at 
first, I know well enough it is only because you think I 
can talk, not because you think I know my business, that 
you let me speak to you at all. If I were to tell you any- 
thing that seemed to you strange, you would not believe 
it, and yet it would only be in telhng you strange things 
that I could be of use to you. I could be of great use to 
you — infinite use, with brief saying, if you would beheve 
it; but you would not, just because the thing that would 
be of real use would displease you. You are all wild, 
for instance, with admiration of Gustave Dore. Well, 
suppose I were to tell you in the strongest terms I 
could use, that Gustave Dore's art was bad — bad, not in 
weakness, — not in failure, — but bad with dreadful power — 
the power of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, 
and polluting; that so long as you looked at it, no percep- 
tion of pure or beautiful art was possible for you. Suppose 
I were to tell you that ! What would be the use? Would 
you look at Gustave Dore less? Rather more, I fancy. On 
the other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with 
me, if I chose. I know well enough what you like, and how 
to praise it to your better hking. I could talk to you 
about moonhght, and twihght, and spring flowers, and 
autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael — how 
motherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo — how majestic! 
and the saints of Angelico — how pious ! and the Cherubs of 



32 JOHN RUSKIN 



Correggio — how delicious! ""Old as I am, I could play you 
a tune on the harp yet, that you would dance to. But 
neither you nor I should be a bit the better or wiser ^or, 
if we were, our increased wisdom could be of no practical 
effect. For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, 
differ from the sciences also in this, that their power is 
founded not merely on facts which can be communicated, 
but on dispositions which require to be created. Art is 
neither to be achieved by effort of thinking, nor explained 
by accuracy of speaking. It is the instinctive and neces- 
sary result of powers which can only be developed through 
the mind of successive generations, and which finally 
burst into Hfe under social conditions as slow of growth as 
the faculties they regulate. Whole aeras of mighty history 
are summed, and the passions of dead myriads are concen- 
trated, in the existence of a noble art; and if that noble 
art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice; not caring 
in the least to hear lectures on it ; and since it is not among 
us, be assured we have to go back to the root of it, or, at 
least, to the place where the stock of it is yet alive, and 
the branches began to die. 

And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, 
partly with reference to matters which are at this time of 
greater moment than the arts — that if we undertook such 
recession to the vital germ of national arts that have 
decayed, we should find a more singular arrest of their 
power in Ireland than in any other European country. 
For in the eighth century, Ireland possessed a school of 
art in her manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of 
its quahties — apparently in all essential quaUties of deco- 
rative invention — was quite without rival; seeming as if it 
might have advanced to the highest triumphs in architec- 
ture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in its 
nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspic- 
uousness of pause to which there is no parallel; so that, 



The mystery of life 33 



long ago, in tracing the progress of European schools 
from infancy to strength, I chose for the students of Ken- 
sington, in a lecture since pubHshed, two characteristic 
examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the one case, 
skill which was progressive — in the other, skill which 
was at pause. In the one case, it was work receptive of 
correction — hungry for correction — and in the other, work 
which inherently rejected correction. I chose for them 
a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to 
say that the incorrigible Angel was also an Irish angel ! 

And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both 
pieces of art there was an equal falhng short of the needs of 
fact; but the Lombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, 
and the Irish Angel thought himself all right. The eager 
Lombardic sculptor, though firmly insisting on his childish 
idea, yet showed in the irregular broken touches of the 
features, and the imperfect struggle for softer hues in the 
form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not 
render; there was the strain of effort, under conscious 
imperfection, in every hne. But the Irish missal-painter 
had drawn his angel with no sense of failure, in happy 
complacency, and put red dots into the palms of each hand, 
and rounded the eyes into perfect circles, and, I regret to 
say, left the mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction 
to himself. 

May I without offence ask you to consider whether 
this mode of arrest in ancient Irish art may not be indica- 
tive of points of character which even yet, in some measure, 
arrest your national power? I have seen much of Irish 
character, and have watched it closely, for I have also 
much loved it. And I think the form of failure to which it 
is most hable is this, that being generous-hearted, and 
wholly intending always to do right, it does not attend to 
the external laws of right, but thinks it must necessarily 
do right because it means to do so, and therefore does wrong 



34 JOHN RUSKIN 



without finding it out ; and then when the consequences of 
its wrong come upon it, or upon others connected with it, 
it cannot conceive that the wrong is in anywise of its 
causing or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange 
agony of desire for justice, as feehng itself wholly innocent, 
which leads it farther astray, until there is nothing that it 
is not capable of doing with a good conscience. 

But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or present 
relations between Ireland and England, you have been 
wrong, and we right. Far from that, I beheve that in all 
great questions of principle, and in all details of administra- 
tion of law, you have been usually right, and we wrong; 
sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in resolute 
iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all disputes between 
states, though the strongest is nearly always mainly in the 
wrong, the weaker is often so in a minor degree; and I 
think we sometimes admit the possibihty of our being in 
error, and you never do. 

And now, returning to the broader question what these 
arts and labours of life have to teach us of its mystery, 
this is the first of their lessons— 4hat the more beautiful the 
art, the more it is essentially the work of people who feel 
themselves wrong; — who are striving for the fulfilment of a 
law, and the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not yet 
attained, which they feel even farther and farther from 
attaining, the more they strive for it.*^ And yet, in still 
deeper sense, it is the work of people who know also that 
they are right. The very sense of inevitable error from 
their purpose marks the perfectness of that purpose, and 
the continued sense of failure arises from the continued 
opening of the eyes more clearly to all the sacredest laws of 
truth. 

This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and 
greatly precious one, namely : — that whenever the arts and 
labours of life are fulfilled in this spirit of striving against 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 35 

misrule, and doing whatever we have to do, honourably 
and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as much as 
seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths, 
by which that happiness is pursued, there is disappoint- 
ment, or destruction: for ambition and for passion there 
is no rest — no fruition; the fairest pleasures of youth 
perish in a darkness greater than their past Hght ; and the 
loftiest and purest love too often does but inflame the 
cloud of life with endless fire of pain. But, ascending 
from lowest to highest, through every scale of human 
industry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. 
Ask the labourer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; 
ask the patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong- 
armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and 
with the colours of hght; and none of these, who are true 
workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found the law 
of heaven an unkind one — that in the sweat of their face 
they should eat bread, till they return to the ground; nor 
that they ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, 
it was rendered faithfully to the command — ''Whatsoever 
thy hand findeth to do — do it with thy might." 

These are the two great and constant lessons which our 
labourers teach us of the mystery of life. But there is 
another, and a sadder one^ which they cannot teach us, 
which we must read on their tombstones. 

''Do it with thy might." There have been myriads 
upon myriads of human creatures who have obeyed this 
law — who have put every breath and nerve of their being 
into its toil — who have devoted every hour, and exhausted 
every faculty —who have bequeathed their unaccomplished 
thoughts at death — who being dead, have yet spoken, by 
majesty of memory and strength of example. And, at 
last, what has all this "Might" of humanity accomplished, 
in six thousand years of labour and sorrow? What has it 
donef Take the three chief occupations and arts of men. 



36 JOHN RUSKIN 



one by one, and count their achievements. Begin with 
the first — the lord of them all — agriculture. Six thousand 
years have passed since we were set to till the ground, 
from which we were taken. How much of it is tilled? 
How much of that which is, wisely or well? In the very 
centre and chief garden of Europe — where the two forms of 
parent Christianity have had their fortresses — where the 
noble CathoHcs of the Forest Cantons, and the noble 
Protestants of the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for 
dateless ages, their faiths and liberties — there the un- 
checked Alpine rivers yet run wild in devastation : and the 
marshes, which a few hundred men could redeem with a 
year's labour, still blast their helpless inhabitants into 
fevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe! 
While, on the near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the 
Hesperides, an Arab woman, but a few sunsets since, ate 
her child, for famine. And, with all the treasures of the 
East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, could not find a 
few grains of rice, for a people that asked of us no more ; 
but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them 
perish of hunger. 

Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next 
head of human arts — weaving; the art of queens, hon- 
oured of all noble Heathen women, in the person of their 
virgin goddess — honoured of all Hebrew women, by the 
word of their wisest king — ''She layeth her hands to the 
spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she stretcheth 
out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snow 
for her household, for all her household are clothed with 
scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry, her 
clothing is silk and purple. She maketh fine Hnen, and 
selleth it, and dehvereth girdles to the merchant." What 
have we done in all these thousands of years with this 
bright art of Greek maid and Christian matron? Six 
thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave? 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 37 

Might not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, 
and every feeble breast fenced with sweet colours from the 
cold? What have we done? Our fingers are too few, it 
seems, to twist together some poor covering for our bodies. 
We set our streams to work for us, and choke the air with 
fire, to turn our spinning-wheels — and,^are we yet clothed? 
Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe fou^ with the 
sale of cast clouts and rotten rags? Is not the beauty of 
your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, 
with better honour, nature clothes the brood of the bird in 
its nest, and the suckhng of the wolf in her den? And 
does not every winter's snow robe what you have not 
robed, and shroud what you have not shrouded; and 
every winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted souls, to 
witness against you hereafter, by the voice of their Christ, — 
''I was naked, and ye clothed me not?" 

Lastly — take the Art of Building — the strongest — 
proudest — most orderly — most enduring of the arts of 
man, that, of which the produce is in the surest manner 
accumulative, and need not perish, or be replaced; but if 
once well done, will stand more strongly than the un- 
balanced rocks — more prevalently than the crumbhng hills. 
The art which is associated with all civic pride and sacred 
principle; with which men record their power — satisfy 
their enthusiasm — make sure their defence — define and 
make dear their habitation. And, in six thousand years 
of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of all 
that skill and strength, no vestige is left, but fallen stones, 
that encumber the fields and impede the streams. But, 
from this waste of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what 
is left to us? Constructive and progressive creatures, that 
we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, capable of 
fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not contend, in 
comfort, with the insects of the forest, or, in achievement, 
with the worm of the sea. The white surf rages in vain 



38 JOHN RUSKIN 



against the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nas- 
cent life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places 
where once dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and 
the moth have cells for each of their young, but our Uttle 
ones he in festering heaps, in homes that consume them 
hke graves; and night by night, from the corners of our 
streets, rises up the cry of the homeless — ''I was a stranger, 
and ye took me not in." 

Must it be always thus? Is our hfe for ever to be 
without profit — without possession? Shall the strength of 
its generations be as barren as death; or cast away their 
labour, as the wild fig tree casts her untimely figs? Is it all 
a dream then — the desire of the eyes and the pride of life — 
or, if it be, might we not live in nobler dream than this? 
The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, 
though they have told us nothing about a hfe to come, 
have told us much about the hfe that is now. They have 
had — they also, — their dreams, and we have laughed at 
them. They have dreamed of mercy, and of justice; they 
have dreamed of peace and good-will; they have dreamed 
of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; they 
have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in 
store; they have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of 
providence in law; of gladness of parents, and strength of 
children, and glory of grey hairs. And at these visions of 
theirs we have mocked, and held them for idle and vain, 
unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we accomplished 
with our realities? Is this what has come of our worldly 
wisdom, tried against their folly? this our mightiest pos- 
sible, against their impotent ideal? or have we only 
wandered among the spectra of a baser fehcity, and chased 
phantoms of the tombs, instead of visions of the Almighty; 
and walked after the imaginations of our evil hearts, instead 
of after the counsels of Eternity, until our lives — not in the 
likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of hell — 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 39 

have become ''as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, 
and then vanisheth away?" 

Does it vanish then? Are you sure of that? — sure, that 
the nothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troubled 
nothingness ;' and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets 
itself in vain, cannot change into the smoke of the torment 
that ascends for ever? Will any answer that they are 
sure of it, and that there is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, 
nor labour, whither they go? Be it so; will you not, then, 
make as sure of the Life, that now is, as you are of the 
Death that is to come? Your hearts are wholly in this 
world — will you not give them to it wisely, as well as per- 
fectly? And see, first of all, that you have hearts, and 
sound hearts, too, to give. Because you have no heaven 
to look for, is that any reason that you should remain igno- 
rant of this wonderful and infinite earth, which is firmly 
and instantly given you in possession? Although your 
days are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it 
necessary that you should share the degradation of the 
brute, because you are condemned to its mortality ; or live 
the life of the moth, and of the worm, because you are to 
companion them in the dust? Not so; we may have but 
a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only — 
perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked 
back on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an 
eye; still, we are men, not insects; we are living spirits, 
not passing clouds. ''He maketh the winds His messen- 
gers; the momentary fire. His minister;" and shall we do 
less than these? Let us do the work of men while we bear 
the form of them; and, as we snatch our narrow portion of 
time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance 
of passion out of Immortality — even though our lives he 
as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then 
vanisheth away. 

But there are some of you who believe not this — who 



40 JOHN RUSKIN 



think this cloud of life has no such close — ^that it is to float, 
revealed and illumined, upon the floor of heaven, in the day 
when He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him. 
Some day, you believe, within these five, or ten, or twenty 
years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and the 
books opened. If that be true, far more than that must be 
true. Is there but one day of judgment? Why, for us 
every day is a day of judgment — every day is a Dies Irae, 
and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its West. 
Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave 
are opened? It waits at the doors of your houses — it waits 
at the corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judg- 
ment — the insects that we crush are our judges — the 
moments we fret away are our judges — the elements that 
feed us, judge, as they minister^^and the pleasures that de- 
ceive us, judge as they indulge.- Let us, for our lives, do 
the work of Men while we bear the Form of them, if indeed 
those lives are Not as a vapour, and do Not vanish awa}^ 
"The work of men" — and what is that? Well, we may 
any of us know very quickly, on the condition of being 
wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the most 
part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we are 
to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, 
and it is a mortal one — we want to keep back part of the 
price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if 
the only harm in a cross was the weight of it — as if it was 
only a thing to be carried, instead of to be — crucified upon. 
"They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the affec- 
tions and lusts." Does that mean, think you, that in time 
of national distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every 
interest and hope of humanity — none of us will cease jest- 
ing, none cease idling, none put themselves to any whole- 
some work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their 
footman's coats, to save the world? Or does it rather 
mean, that they are ready to leave houses, lands and 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 41 

kindreds — yes, and life, if need be? Life! — some of us are 
ready enough to throw that away, joyless as we have made 
it. But "station in Life" — how many of us are ready to 
quit that? Is it not always the great objection, where 
there is question of finding something useful to do — ''We 
cannot leave our stations in Life?" 

Those of us who really cannot — that is to say, who can 
only maintain themselves by continuing in some business 
or salaried office, have already something to do; and all 
that they have to see to, is that they do it honestly and 
with all their might. But with most people who use that 
apology, ''remaining in the station of Hfe to which Provi- 
dence has called them," means keeping all the carriages, 
and all the footmen and large houses they can possibly 
pay for; and, once for all, I say that if ever Providence 
did put them into stations of that sort — which is not at all 
a matter of certainty — Providence is just now very dis- 
tinctly caUing them out again. ' Levi's station in life was the 
receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and 
Paul's, the ante-chambers of the High Priest, — which 
"station in life" each had to leave, with brief notice. 
* And, whatever our station in hfe may be, at this crisis, 
those of us who mean to fulfill our duty ought, first, to Uve 
on as little as we can; and, secondly, to do all the whole- 
some work for it we can, and to spend all we can spare in 
doing all the sure good we can. 

And sure good is first in feeding people, then in dressing 
people, then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing 
people, with arts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought. 

I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let your- 
selves be deceived by any of the common [talk of "in- 
discriminate charity.'' The order to us is not to feed the 
deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor the 
amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to feed the 
hungry. It is quite true, infalhbly true, that if any man 



42 JOHN RUSKIN 



will not work, neither should he eat — think of that, and 
every time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and gentle- 
men, say solemnly, before you ask a blessing, ''How much 
work have I done to-day for my dinner?" But the proper 
way to enforce that order on those below you, as well as on 
yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people to 
starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize 
your vagabond ; and shut your vagabond up out of honest 
people's way, and very sternly then see that, until he has 
worked, he does not eat. But the first thing is to be sure 
you have the food to give; and, therefore, to enforce the 
organization of vast activities in agriculture and in com- 
merce, for the production of the wholesomest food, and 
proper storing and distribution of it, so that no famine 
shall any more be possible among civiHzed beings. There 
is plenty of work in this business alone, and at once, for 
any number of people who like to engage in it. 

Secondly, dressing people — that is to say, urging every 
one within reach of your influence to be always neat and 
clean, and giving them means of being so. In so far as 
they absolutely refuse, you must give up the effort with 
respect to them, only taking care that no children within 
your sphere of influence shall any more be brought up with 
such habits; and that every person who is wilUng to dress 
with propriety shall have encouragement to do so. And 
the first absolutely necessary step towards this is the 
gradual adoption of a consistent dress for different ranks 
of persons, so that their rank shall be known by their dress ; 
and the restriction of the changes of fashion within certain 
Hmits. All which appears for the present quite impossible; 
but it is only so far as even difficult as it is difficult to con- 
quer our vanity, frivoHty, and desire to appear what we 
are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, 
that these mean and shallow vices are unconquerable by 
Christian women. 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 43 

And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may 
think should have been put first, but I put it third, because 
we must feed and clothe people where we find them, and 
lodge them afterwards. And providing lodgment for them 
means a great deal of vigorous legislation, and cutting 
down of vested interests that stand in the way, and after 
that, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough sani- 
tary and remedial action in the houses that we have; and 
then the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and in 
groups of limited extent, kept in proportion to their 
streams, and walled round, so that there may be no fester- 
ing and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy 
street within, and the open country without, with a belt of 
beautiful garden and orchard round the walls, so that 
from any part of the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and 
sight of far horizon might be reachable in a few minutes' 
walk. This the final aim; but in immediate action every 
minor and possible good to be instantly done, when, 
and as, we can; roofs mended that have holes in 
them — fences patched that have gaps in them — walls 
buttressed that totter — and floors propped that shake; 
cleanliness and order enforced with our own hands and 
eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the fine 
arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a 
flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in 
a Savoy inn, where they hadn't washed their stairs since 
they first went up them? and I never made a better sketch 
than that afternoon. 

These, then, are the three first needs of civihzed life; 
and the law for every Christian man and woman is, that 
they shall be in direct service towards one of these three 
needs, as far as is consistent with their own special occupa- 
tion, and if they have no special business, then wholly in 
one of these services. And out of such exertion in plain 
duty all other good will come; for in this direct contention 



44 JOHN RUSKIN 



with material evil, you will find out the real nature of all 
evil; you will discern by the various kinds of resistance, 
what is really the fault and main antagonism to good; 
also you will find the most unexpected helps and profound 
lessons given, and truths will come thus down to us which 
the speculation of all our lives would never have raised us 
up to. You will find nearly every educational problem 
solved, as soon as you truly want to do something; every- 
body will become of use in their own fittest way, and will 
learn what is best for them to know in that use. Com- 
petitive examination will then, and not till then, be whole- 
some, because it will be daily, and calm, and in practice; 
and on these famihar arts, and minute, but certain and 
serviceable knowledges, will be surely edified and sus- 
tained the greater arts and splendid theoretical sciences. 
But much more than this. On such holy and simple 
practice will be founded, indeed, at last, an infalHble religion. 
The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and the most 
terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest religion, 
which is not daily founded on rational, effective, humble, 
and helpful action. Helpful action, observe! for 'there is 
just one law, which obeyed, keeps all religions pure — for- 
gotten, makes them all false. Whenever in any religious 
faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon 
the points in which we differ from other people, we are 
wrong, and in the devil's power.-^ That is the essence of 
the Pharisee's thanksgiving — ''Lord, I thank thee that I 
am not as other men are." At every moment of our lives 
we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with 
other people, but in what we agree with them; and the 
moment we find we can agree as to anything that should be 
done, kind or good, (and who but fools couldn't?) then do 
it; push at it together; you can't quarrel in a side-by-side 
push; but the moment that even the best men stop push- 
ing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 45 

piety, and it's all over. I will not speak of the crimes 
which in past times have been committed in the name of 
Christ, nor of the folhes which are at this hour held to be 
consistent with obedience to Him; but I will speak of the 
morbid corruption and waste of vital power in rehgious 
sentiment, by which the pure strength of that which should 
be the guiding soul of every nation, the splendour of its 
youthful manhood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, 
is averted or cast away. You- may see continually girls 
who have never been taught to do a single useful thing 
thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot 
cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life 
has been passed either in play or in pride; you will find 
girls like these when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their 
innate passion of rehgious spirit, which was meant by God 
to support them through the irksomeness of daily toil, 
into grievous and vain meditation over the meaning of the 
great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be under- 
stood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and 
mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their 
pure consciences warped into fruitless agony concerning 
questions which the laws of common serviceable hfe would 
have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out of 
their way. -^Give such a girl any true work that will make 
her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the con- 
sciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the 
better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthu- 
siasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and 
beneficent peace. ^^ 

So with our youths. We once taught them to make 
Latin verses, and called them educated; now we teach them 
to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and call them 
educated. Can they plow, can they sow, can they plant 
at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Is it the 
effort of their Uves to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in 



46 JOHN RUSKIN 



thought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it is, with 
some, nay with many, and the strength of England is in 
them, and the hope; but we have to turn their courage 
from the toil of war to the toil of mercy ; and their intellect 
from dispute of words to discernment of things; and their 
knighthood from the errantry of adventure to the state and 
fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, 
for them, and for us an incorruptible feUcity, and an 
infallible rehgion; shall abide for us Faith, no more to be 
assailed by temptation, no more to be defended by wrath 
and by fear; — shall abide with us Hope, no more to be 
quenched by the years that overwhelm, or made ashamed 
by the shadows that betray; shall abide for us, and with 
us, the greatest of these; the abiding will, the abiding 
name, of our Father. For the greatest of these, is Charity. 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 



"Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made cheerful, 
and bloom as the lily; and the barren places of Jordan shall run wild 
with wood." — Isaiah 35, i. (Septuagint.) 

IT WILL, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the sequel 
of one previously given, that I should shortly state 
to you my general intention in both. The questions 
specially proposed to you in the first, namely, How and What 
to Read, rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my 
endeavour to make you propose earnestly to yourselves, 
namely, Why to Read. I want you to feel, with me, 
that whatever advantages we possess in the present day 
in the diffusion of education and of literature, can only 
be rightly used by any of us when we have apprehended 
clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to 
teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed moral 
training and well-chosen reading lead to the possession of 
a power over the ill-guided and ilhterate, which is, accord- 
ing to the measure of it, in the truest sense, kingly; con- 
ferring indeed the purest kingship that can exist among 
men: too many other kingships (however distinguished 
by visible insignia or material power) being either spectral, 
or tyrannous; — spectral — that is to say, aspects and 
shadows only of royalty, hollow as death, and which only 
the ''Likeness of a kingly crown have on:" or else tyran- 
nous — that is to say, substituting their own will for the 
law of justice and love by which all true kings rule. 

There is, then, I repeat — and as I want to leave this 
idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it — only 
one pure kind of kingship; an inevitable and eternal kind, 
crowned or not; the kingship, namely, which consists in a 

(47) 



48 JOHN RUSKIN 



stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful state, than 
that of others; enabling you, therefore, to guide, or to 
raise them. Observe that word ''State;" we have got into 
a loose way of using it. It means literally the standing 
and stability of a thing; and you have the full force of it 
in the derived word ''statue" — "the immoveable thing.". 
A king's majesty or "state," then, and the right of his 
kingdom to be called a state, depends on the moveless- 
ness of both: — without tremor, without quiver of balance; 
estabhshed and enthroned upon a foundation of eternal 
law which nothing can alter or overthrow. 

Beheving that all literature and all education are ouiy 
useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, 
and therefore kingly, power — first, over ourselves, and, 
through ourselves, over all around us, I am now going to 
ask you to consider with me farther, what special portion 
or kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble educa- 
tion, may rightly be possessed by women; and how far 
they also are called to a true queenly power. Not in their 
households merely, but over all within their sphere. And 
in what sense, if they rightly understood and exercised 
this royal or gracious influence, the order and beauty 
induced by such benignant power would justify us in 
speaking of the territories over which each of them reigned, 
as "Queens' Gardens." 

And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far deeper 
question, which — strange though this may seem — remains 
among many of us yet quite undecided, in spite of its 
infinite importance. 

We cannot determine what the queenly power of women 
should be, until we are agreed what their ordinary power 
should be. We cannot consider how education may fit 
them for any widely extending duty, until we are agreed 
what is their true constant duty. And there never was 
9, time when wilder words were spoken, or more vain 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 49 

imagination permitted, respecting this question — quite vital 
to all social happiness. The relations of the womanly to the 
manly nature, their different capacities of intellect or of 
virtue, seem never to have been yet measured with entire 
consent. ■^We hear of the mission and of the rights of 
Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission 
and the rights of Man;-^as if she and her lord were crea- 
tures of independent kind and of irreconcileable claim. 
This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrong — perhaps 
even more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus- far 
what I hope to prove) — is the idea that woman is only the 
shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a 
thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether 
in her weakness by the pre-eminence of his fortitude. 
- This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her 
who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could 
be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave ! 

Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear and 
harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it is true) of 
what womanly mind and virtue are in power and office, 
with respect to man's; and how their relations, rightly 
accepted, aid, and increase, the vigour, and honour, and 
authority of both. 

And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last lecture, 
namely, that the first use of education was to enable us to 
consult with the wisest and the greatest men on all points 
of earnest difficulty. That to use books rightly, was to go 
to them for help: to appeal to them, when our own knowl- 
edge and power of thought failed; to be led by them into 
wider sight, purer conception than our own, and receive 
from them the united sentence of the judges and councils 
of all time, against our sohtary and unstable opinion. 

Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest, 
the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in any 
wise on this point : let us hear the testimony they have left 



50 JOHN RUSKIN 



respecting what they held to be the true dignity of woman, 
and her mode of help to man. 

And first let us take Shakespeare. 

Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes ; — 
he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic 
figure in all his plays, except the sUght sketch of Henry the 
Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage; and the 
still shghter Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
In his laboured and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello 
would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so 
great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round 
him; but he is the only example even approximating to 
the heroic type. Coriolanus — Caesar — Antony, stand in 
flawed strength, and fall by their vanities; — Hamlet is 
indolent, and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient 
boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to 
adverse fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at 
heart, but too rough and unpolished to be of true use at 
the critical time, and he sinks into the office of a servant 
only. Orlando, no less noble, is yet the despairing toy of 
chance, followed, comforted, saved, by Rosahnd. Whereas 
there is hardly a'play that has not a perfect woman in it, 
steadfast in grave hope, and errorless purpose; CordeHa, 
Desdemona,'Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, 
Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosahnd, Helena, and last, and 
perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; conceived in 
the highest heroic type of humanity. 

Then observe, secondly. 

The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the 
folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is 
by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and faihng that, 
there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to 
his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his mis- 
understanding of his children; the virtue of his one true 
daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 51 

others, unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, she 
all but saves him. 

Of Othello I need not trace the tale; — nor the one weak- 
ness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his per- 
ceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character 
in the play, the EmiUa who dies in wild testimony against 
his error: — ''Oh, murderous coxcomb! What should such 
a fool Do with so good a wife?''. 

In Romeo and JuHet, the wise and entirely brave strata- 
gem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless 
impatience of her husband. In Winter's Tale, and in 
Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two princely 
households, lost through long years, and imperilled to the 
death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are 
redeemed at last by the queenly patience and wisdom of 
the wives. In Measure for Measure, the injustice of the 
judges, and the corrupt cowardice of the brother, are 
opposed to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a 
woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, acted upon 
in time, would have saved her son from all evil; his mo- 
mentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer at last 
granted, saves him — not, indeed, from death but from the 
curse of Hving as the destroyer of his country. 

And what shall I say of Juha, constant against the 
fickleness of a lover who is a mere wicked child? — of Helena, 
against the petulance and insult of a careless youth? — of 
the patience of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the 
calmly devoted wisdom of the ''unlessoned girl," who 
appears among the helplessness, the bHndness, and the 
vindictive passions of men, as a gentle angel, to save merely 
by her presence, and defeat the worst intensities of crime 
by her smile? 

Observe, further, among all the principal figures in 
Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak woman — 
Ophelia; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the critical 



52 JOHN RUSKIN 



moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a guide 
to him when he needs her most, that all the bitter catastro- 
phe follows. Finally, though there are three wicked 
women among the principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, 
and Goneril, they are felt at once to be frightful exceptions 
to the ordinary laws of hfe; fatal in their influence also in 
proportion to the power for good which they have abandoned. 

Such, in broad Hght, is Shakespeare's testimony to the 
position and character of women in human life. He repre- 
sents them as infallibly faithful and wise counsellors, — 
incorruptibly just and pure examples — strong always to 
sanctify, even when they cannot save. 

Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of the 
nature of man, — still less in his understanding of the 
causes and courses of fate, — but only as the writer who has 
given us the broadest view of the conditions and modes of 
ordinary thought in modern society, I ask you next to 
receive the witness of Walter Scott. 

I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of no 
value: and though the early romantic poetry is very 
beautiful, its testimony is of no weight, other than that of 
a boy's ideal. But his true works, studied from Scottish 
Hfe, bear a true witness, and in the whole range of these 
there are but three men who reach the heroic type* — 
Dandle Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse: of these, 
one is a border farmer; another a freebooter; the third a 
soldier in a bad cause. And these touch the ideal of hero- 
ism only in their courage and faith, together with a strong 

* I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have 
noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great char- 
acters of men in the Waverley novels — the selfishness and narrowness 
of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in Edward 
Glendenning, and the like; and I ought to have noticed that there are 
several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the backgrounds: 
three — let us accept joyously this courtesy to England and her soldiers 
— are English officers: Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, and Colonel 
Mannering. 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 53 

but uncultivated, or mistakenly applied, intellectual power; 
while his younger men are the gentlemanly playthings of 
fantastic fortune, and only by aid (or accident) of that 
fortune, survive, not vanquish, the trials they involun- 
tarily sustain. Of any disciplined, or consistent character, 
earnest in a purpose wisely conceived, or dealing with 
forms of hostile evil, definitely challenged, and resolutely 
subdued, there is no trace in his conceptions of men. 
Whereas in his imaginations of women, — in the characters 
of Ellen Douglas, of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, 
Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, 
AHce Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — with 
endless varieties of grace, tenderness, and intellectual 
power we find in all a quite infallible and inevitable sense 
of dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and untiring 
self-sacrifice to even the appearance of duty, much more 
to its real claims; and, finally, a patient wisdom of deeply 
restrained affection, which does infinitely more than pro- 
tect its objects from a momentary error; it gradually 
forms, animates, and exalts the characters of the unworthy 
lovers, until, at the close of the tale, we are just able, and 
no more, to take patience in hearing of their unmerited 
success. 

So that in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it is 
the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the 
youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches 
over or educates his mistress. 

Next, take, though more briefly, graver and deeper testi- 
mony — that of the great Italians and Greeks. You know 
well the plan of Dante's great poem — that it is a love-poem 
to his dead lady, a song of praise for her watch over his 
soul. Stooping only to pity, never to love, she yet saves him 
from destruction — saves him from hell. He is going eter- 
nally astray in despair; she comes down from heaven to his 
help, and throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, 



54 JOHN RUSKIN 



interpreting for him the most difficult truths, divine and 
human, and leading him, w^th rebuke upon rebuke, from 
star to star. 

I do not insist upon Dante's conception; if I began I 
could not cease: besides, you might think this a wild 
imagination of one poet's heart. So I will rather read 
to you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a knight of 
Pisa to his Hving lady, wholly characteristic of the feeling 
of all the noblest men of the thirteenth century, preserved 
among many other such records of knightly honour and 
love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered for us from among 
the early Italian poets. 

For lo ! thy law is passed 
That this my love should manifestly be 

To serve and honour thee: 
And so I do; and my delight is full, 
Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 

Without almost, I am all rapturous, 

Since thus my will was set 
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence: 
Nor ever seems it anytliing could rouse 

A pain or regret, 
But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense: 
Considering that from thee all virtues spread 

As from a fountain head, — 
That in thy gift is wisdom's best avail, 

And honour without fail; 
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, 
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 

Lady, since I conceived 
Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, 

My life has been apart 
In shining brightness and the place of truth; 

Which till that time, good sooth, 
Groped among shadows in a darken'd place, 

Where many hours and days 
It hardly ever had remember'd good. 

But now my servitude 
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 

A man from a wild beast 
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived. 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 55 



You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight would have 
had a lower estimate of women than this Christian lover. 
His own spiritual subjection to them was indeed not so 
absolute; but as regards their own personal character, it 
was only because you could not have followed me so easily, 
that I did not take the Greek women instead of Shake- 
speare's; and instance, for chief ideal types of human 
beauty and faith, the simple mother's and wife's heart of 
Andromache; the divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra; 
the playful kindness and simple princess-Ufe of happy 
Nausicaa ; the housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with 
its watch upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly 
devoted piety of the sister, and daughter, in Antigone ; the 
bowing down of Iphigenia, lamb-Hke and silent; and, finally, 
the expectation of the resurrection, made clear to the soul 
of the Greeks in the return from her grave of that Alcestis, 
who, to save her husband, had passed calmly through the 
bitterness of death. 

Now I could multiply witness upon witness of this kind 
upon you if I had time. I would take Chaucer, and show 
you why he wrote a Legend of Good Women; but no 
Legend of Good Men. I would take Spenser, and show 
you how all his fairy knights are sometimes deceived and 
sometimes vanquished; but the soul of Una is never dark- 
ened, and the spear of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I 
could go back into the mythical teaching of the most 
ancient times, and show you how the great people, — by 
one of whose princesses it was appointed that the Lawgiver 
of all the earth should be educated, rather than by his own 
kindred; — how that great Egyptian people, wisest then of 
nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a 
woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's 
shuttle: and how the name and the form of that spirit, 
adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, became 
that Athena of the olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to whose 



56 JOHN RUSKIN 



faith you owe, down to this date, whatever you hold most 
precious in art, in Hterature, or in types of national virtue. 
But I will not wander into this distant and mythical ele- 
ment ; I will only ask you to give its legitimate value to the 
testimony of these great poets and men of the world, — con- 
sistent as you see it is on this head. I will ask you whether 
it can be supposed that these men, in the main work of 
their hves, are amusing themselves with a fictitious and 
idle view of the relations between man and woman; — nay, 
worse than fictitious or idle; for a thing may be imaginary, 
yet desirable, if it were possible; but this, their ideal of 
women, is, according to our common idea of the marriage 
relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, is not to 
guide, nor even to think, for herself. The man is always 
to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the 
superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power. Is it 
not somewhat important to make up our minds on this 
matter? Are all these great men mistaken, or are we? 
Are Shakespeare and ^schylus, Dante and Homer, merely 
dressing dolls for us ; or, worse than dolls, unnatural visions, 
the reahzation of which, were it possible, would bring 
anarchy into all households and ruin into all affections? 
Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the evidence of 
facts, given by the human heart itself. In all Christian 
ages which have been remarkable for their purity or prog- 
ress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient devotion, 
by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient — not merely 
enthusiastic and worshipping in imagination, but entirely 
subject, receiving from the beloved woman, however 
young, not only the encouragement, the praise, and the 
reward of all toil, but so far as any choice is open, or any 
question difficult of decision, the direction of all toil. That 
chivalry, to the abuse and dishonour of which are attrib- 
utable primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in peace, 
or corrupt and ignoble in domestic relations; and to the 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 57 

original purity and power of which we owe the defence 
ahke of faith, of law, and of love; — that chivalry, I say, in 
its very first conception of honourable life, assumes the 
subjection of the young knight to the command — should 
it even be the command in caprice — of his lady. It assumes 
this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary 
impulse of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of 
bHnd service to its lady; that where that true faith and 
captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passions must 
be; and that in this rapturous obedience to the single love 
of his youth, is the sanctification of all man's strength, 
and the continuance of all his purposes. And this, not 
because such obedience would be safe, or honourable, were 
it ever rendered to the unworthy; but because it ought 
to be impossible for every noble youth-^it is impossible 
for every one rightly trained — to love any one whose gentle 
counsel he cannot trust, or whose prayerful command he 
can hesitate to obey. 

I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I 
think it should commend itself at once to your knowledge 
of what has been and to your feehngs of what should be. 
You cannot think that the buckhng on of the knight's 
armour by his lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic 
fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth — that the 
soul's armour is never well set to the heart unless a woman's 
hand has braced it ; and it is only when she braces it loosely 
that the honour of manhood fails. Know you not those 
lovely lines — I would they were learned by all youthful 
ladies of England: — 

"Ah, wasteful woman! — she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
How has she cheapen'd Paradise ! 
How given for nought her priceless gift, 
How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine. 
Which, spent with due respective thrift. 
Had made brutes men, and men divine!"* 
* Coventry Patmore. 



58 JOHN RUSKIN 



This much, then, respecting the relations of lovers I 
beHeve you will accept. But what we too often doubt is 
the fitness of the continuance of such a relation throughout 
the whole of human Hfe. We think it right in the 
lover and mistress, not in the husband and wife. That is 
to say, we think that a reverent and tender duty is due to 
one whose affection we still doubt, and whose character we 
as yet do but partially and distantly discern; and that 
this reverence and duty are to be withdrawn when the 
affection has become wholly and limitlessly our own, and 
the character has been so sifted and tried that we fear not 
to entrust it with the happiness of our lives. Do you not 
see how ignoble this is, as well as how unreasonable? Do 
you not feel that marriage — when it is marriage at all, — is 
only the seal which marks the vowed transition of tempo- 
rary into untiring service, and of fitful into eternal love? 

But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding function 
of the woman reconcileable with a true wifely subjection? 
Simply in that it is a guiding, not a determining, function. 
Let me try to show you briefly how these powers seem to be 
rightly distinguishable. 

* We are fooHsh, and without excuse foolish, in speaking of 
the ''superiority" of one sex to the other, as if they could be 
compared in similar things. Each has what the other has 
not: each completes the other, and is completed by the 
other: they are in nothing aUke, and the happiness and 
perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving 
from the other what the other only can give. < 

Now their separate characters are briefly these. The 
man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is emi- 
nently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. 
His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy 
for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is 
just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's 
power is for rule, not for battle, — and her intellect is not 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 59 



for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrange- 
ment and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their 
claims and their places. Her great function is Praise: she 
enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of con- 
test. By her office, and place, she is protected from all 
danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open 
world, must encounter all peril and trial: — to him, there- 
fore, the failure, the offence, the inevitable error: often he 
must be wounded, or subdued, often misled, and always 
hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within 
his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, 
need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or 
offence. This is the true nature of home — it is the place 
of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from 
all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, 
it is not home: so far as the anxieties of the outer hfe pene- 
trate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, 
unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by 
either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to 
be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which 
you have roofed over, and Hghted fire in. But so far as 
it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth 
watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none 
may come but those whom they can receive with love, — 
so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a 
nobler shade and fight, — shade as of the rock in a weary 
land, and fight as of the Pharos in the stormy sea ; — so far 
it vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, of home. 

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always 
round her. The stars only may be over her head; the 
glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at 
her foot : but home is yet wherever she is ; and for a noble 
woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with 
cedar, or painted with vermifion, shedding its qmet fight 
far, for those who else were homeless. 



60 JOHN RUSKIN 



This, then, I beheve to be, — will you not admit it to be,— 
the woman's true place and power? But do not you see 
that to fulfil this, she must — as far as one can use such 
terms of a human creature — be incapable of error? So 
far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must 
be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infaUibly 
wise — wise, not for self-development, but for self-renuncia- 
tion: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, 
but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with 
the narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with 
the passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because 
infinitely apphcable, modesty of service — the true change- 
fulness of woman. In that great sense — "La, donna e 
mobile," not ''Qual pium' al vento;" no, nor yet ''Variable 
as the shade, by the fight quivering aspen made;" but 
variable as the light, manifold in fair and serene division, 
that it may take the colour of all that it falls upon, and 
exalt it. 

II. I have been trying, thus far, to show you what 
should be the place, and what the power of woman. Now, 
secondly, we ask, What kind of education is to fit her for 
these? 

And if you indeed think this a true conception of her 
office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the course 
of education which would fit her for the one, and raise her 
to the other. 

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful persons 
now doubt this, — is to secure for her such physical training 
and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect her 
beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty being 
unattainable without splendour of activity and of dehcate 
strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its 
power; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred fight 
too far: only remember that all physical freedom is vain 
to produce beauty without a corresponding freedom of 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 61 

heart. There are two passages of that poet who is distin- 
guished, it seems to me, from all others — not by power, 
but by exquisite Tightness — which point you to the source, 
and describe to you, in a few syllables, the completion of 
womanly beauty. I will read the introductory stanzas, 
but the last is the one I wish you specially to notice: 

"Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
Then Nature said, a lovelier flower 

On earth was never sowti. 
This child I to myself will take; 
She shall be mine, and I will make 

A lady of my own. 

"Myself will to my darling be 
Both law and impulse; and with me 

The girl, in rock and plain, 
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
Shall feel an overseeing power 

To kindle, or restrain. 

"The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her, for her the willow bend; 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm, 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

"And vital feelings of delight 
Shall rear her form to stately height, — 

Her virgin bosom swell. 
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give. 
While she and I together live, 

Here in this happy dell." 

''Vital feelings of dehght," observe. There are deadly 
f eeUngs of dehght ; but the natural ones are vital, necessary 
to very life. 

And they must be feehngs of dehght, if they are to be 
vital. » Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if you do 
not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put 



62 JOHN RUSKIN 



on a good girl's nature — there is not one check you give to 
her instincts of affection or of effort — which will not be 
indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which is 
all the more painful because it takes away the brightness 
from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow 
of virtue. 

This for the means: now note the end. Take from the 
same poet, in two lines, a perfect description of womanly 
beauty — 

"A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet." 

The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can only 
consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in the mem- 
ory of happy and useful years, — full of sweet records, and 
from the joining of this with that yet more majestic child- 
ishness, which is still full of change and promise; — opening 
always — modest at once, and bright, with hope of better 
things to be won, and to be bestowed. ■ There is no old age 
where there is still that promise — it is eternal youth. - 

Thus, then, you have first to mould her physical frame, 
and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, to fill 
and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts 
which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and 
refine its natural tact of love. 

All such knowledge should be given her as may enable 
her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men : and 
yet it should be given, not as knowledge, — not as if it were, 
or could be, for her an object to know; but only to feel, and 
to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter of pride or 
perfectness in herself, whether she knows many languages 
or one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able 
to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand the 
sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to 
her own worth or dignity that she should be acquainted 
with this science or that; but it is of the highest that she 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 63 

should be trained in habits of accurate thought; that she 
should understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and 
the loveliness of natural laws, and follow at least some 
one path of scientific attainment, as far as to the threshold 
of that bitter Valley of Humiliation, into which only the 
wisest and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves 
forever children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. 
It is of little consequence how many positions of cities she 
knows, or how many dates of events, or how many names 
of celebrated persons — it is not the object of education 
to turn a woman into a dictionary; but it is deeply neces- 
sary that she should be taught to enter with her whole 
personality into the history she reads; to picture the 
passages of it vitally in her own bright imagination; to 
apprehend, with her fine instincts, the pathetic circum- 
stances and dramatic relations, which the historian too 
often only eclipses by his reasoning, and disconnects by 
his arrangement: it is for her to trace the hidden equities 
of divine reward, and catch sight, through the darkness, 
of the fateful threads of woven fire that connect error 
with its retribution. But, chiefly of all, she is to be 
taught to extend the limits of her sympathy with respect 
to that history which is being for her determined, as the 
moments pass in which she draws her peaceful breath; and 
to the contemporary calamity which, were it but rightly 
mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. • She is 
to exercise herself in imagining what would be the effects 
upon her mind and conduct, if she were daily brought 
into the presence of the suffering which is not the less real 
because shut from her sight. ^ She is to be taught somewhat 
to understand the nothingness of the proportion which 
that little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the 
world in which God lives and loves ;^-and solemnly she 
is to be taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may 
not be feeble in proportion to the number they embrace, 



64 JOHN RUSKIN 



nor her prayer more languid than it is for the momentary 
relief from pain of her husband or her child, when it is 
uttered for the multitudes of those who have none to love 
them, — and is, ''for all who are desolate and oppressed." 

Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence; perhaps 
you will not be with me in what I believe is most needful 
for me to say. There is one dangerous science for women 
— one which let them indeed beware how they profanely 
touch — that of theology. Strange, and miserably strange, 
that while they are modest enough to doubt their powers, 
and pause at the threshold of sciences where every step is 
demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, and 
without one thought of incompetency, into that science in 
which the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest erred. 
Strange, that they will complacently and pridefully bind 
up whatever vice or folly there is in them, whatever 
arrogance, petulance, or bhnd incomprehensiveness, into 
one bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in 
creatures born to be Love visible, that where they can 
know least, they will condemn first, and think to recom- 
mend themselves to their Master by scrambUng up the 
steps of His judgment throne, to divide it with Him. 
Most strange, that they should think they were led by the 
Spirit of the Comforter into habits of mind which have 
become in them the unmixed elements of home discomfort ; 
and that they dare to turn the Household Gods of Christi- 
anity into ugly idols of their own — spiritual dolls, for them 
to dress according to their caprice; and from which their 
husbands must turn away in grieved contempt, lest they 
should be shrieked at for breaking them. 

I beheve, then, with this exception, that a girl's education 
should be nearly, in its course and material of study, the 
same as a boy's; but quite differently directed. A woman, 
in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her husband 
is Hkely to know, but to know it in a different way. His 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 65 

command of it should be foundational and progressive, 
hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use. 
Not but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things 
in a womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for 
the disciphne and training of their mental powers in such 
branches of study as will be afterwards fittest for social 
service; but, speaking broadly, a man ought to know any 
language or science he learns, thoroughly, while a woman 
ought to know the same language, or science, only so far 
as may enable her to sympathise in her husband's pleasures, 
and in those of his best friends. 

Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as she 
reaches. There is a wide difference between elementary 
knowledge and superficial knowledge — between a firm 
beginning, and a feeble smattering. "^ A woman may always 
help her husband by what she knows, however little; by 
what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only tease him." 

And, indeed, if there were to be any difference between a 
girl's education and a boy's, I should say that of the two 
the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster 
into deep and serious subjects; and that her range of 
literature should be, not more, but less frivolous, calculated 
to add the quahties of patience and seriousness to her 
natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit; and 
also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. 
I enter not now into any question of choice of books ; only 
be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as they 
fall out of the package of the circulating library, wet with 
the last and lightest spray of the fountain of folly. 

Or even of the fountain of wit; for with respect to that 
sore temptation of novel-reading, it is not the badness of a 
novel that we should dread, but its over-wrought interest. 
The weakest romance is not so stupefying as the lower 
forms of rehgious exciting hterature, and the worst romance 
is not so corrupting as false history, false philosophy, or 



66 JOHN RUSKIN 



false political essays. But the best romance becomes 
dangerous, if, by its excitement, it renders the ordinary 
course of Hfe uninteresting, and increases the morbid thirst 
for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never 
be called upon to act. 

I speak therefore of good novels only; and our modern 
literature is particularly rich in types of such. Well read, 
indeed, these books have serious use, being nothing less 
than treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry; studies 
of human nature in the elements of it. But I attach little 
weight to this function: they are hardly ever read with 
earnestness enough to permit them to fulfil it. The utmost 
they usually do is to enlarge somewhat the charity of a 
kind reader, or the bitterness of a mahcious one; for each 
will gather, from the novel, food for her own disposition. 
i Those who are naturally proud and envious will learn from 
Thackeray to despise humanity; those who are naturally 
gentle, to pity it; those who are naturally shallow, to laugh 
at it. So, also, there might be a serviceable power in 
novels to bring before us, in vividness, a human truth 
which we had before dimly conceived; but the temptation 
to picturesqueness of statement is so great, that often the 
best writers of fiction cannot resist it; and our views are 
rendered so violent and one-sided, that their vitality is 
rather a harm than good. 

Without, however, venturing here on any attempt at 
decision how much novel-reading should be allowed, let 
me at least clearly assert this, that whether novels, or 
poetry, or history be read, they should be chosen, not for 
what is out of them, but for what is in them. The chance 
and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or hide 
itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a noble 
girl; but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, and 
his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have access 
to a good Hbrary of old and classical books, there need be 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 67 



no choosing at all. Keep the modern magazine and novel 
out of your girl's way: turn her loose into the old library 
every wet day, and let her alone. She will find what is 
good for her; you cannot: for there is just this difference 
between the making of a girl's character and a boy's — 
you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or 
hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would 
a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into 
anything. She grows as a flower does, — she will wither 
without sun ; she will decay in her sheath, as the narcissus 
does, if you do not give her air enough; she may fall, and 
defile her head in dust, if you leave her without help at 
some moments of her life; but you cannot fetter her; she 
must take her own fair form and way, if she take any, and 
in mind as in body, must have always 

"Her household motions Hght and free 
And steps of virgin liberty." 

Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a 
field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than 
you; and the good ones too, and will eat some bitter and 
prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest 
thought were good. 

Then, in art, keep the finest models before her, and let 
her practice in all accomplishments be accurate and 
thorough, so as to enable her to understand more than she 
accomplishes. I say the finest models — that is to say, 
the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those epithets; 
they will range through all the arts. Try them in music, 
where you might think them the least appUcable. I say 
the truest, that in which the notes most closely and faith- 
fully express the meaning of the words, or the character 
of intended emotion; again, the simplest, that in which 
the meaning and melody are attained with the fewest and 
most significant notes possible; and, finally, the usefullest, 
that music which makes the best words most beautiful, 



JOHN RUSKIN 



which enchants them in our memories each with its own 
glory of sound, and which apphes them closest to the 
heart at the moment we need them. 

And not only in the material and in the course, but yet 
more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl's education be as 
serious as a boy's. You bring up your girls as if they were 
meant for sideboard ornament, and then complain of their 
frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you give 
their brothers — appeal to the same grand instincts of virtue 
in them; teach them also that courage and truth are the 
pillars of their being: do you think that they would not 
answer that appeal, brave and true as they are even now, 
when you know that there is hardly a girl's school in this 
Christian kingdom where the children's courage or sincerity 
would be thought of half so much importance as their way 
of coming in at a door; and when the whole system of 
society, as respects the mode of estabhshing them in life, 
is one rotten plague of cowardice and imposture — coward- 
ice, in not daring to let them live, or love, except as their 
neighbours choose; and imposture, in bringing, for the 
purpose of our own pride, the full glow of the world's worst 
vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when the whole 
happiness of her future existence depends upon her remain- 
ing undazzled? 

And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but 
noble teachers. You consider 'somewhat, before you send 
your boy to school, what kind of a man the master is; — 
whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at least give him full 
authority over your son, and show some respect for him 
yourself; if he comes to dine with you, you do not put 
him at a side table; you know also that, at his college, your 
child's immediate tutor will be under the direction of some 
still higher tutor, for whom you have absolute reverence. 
You do not treat the Dean of Christ Church or the Master 
of Trinity as your inferiors. 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 69 



But what teachers do you give your girls, and what 
reverence do you show to the teachers you have chosen? 
Is a girl Hkely to think her own conduct, or her own intel- 
lect, of much importance, when you trust the entire 
formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a 
person whom you let your servants treat with less respect 
than they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your child 
were a less charge than jams and groceries), and whom 
you yourself think you confer an honour upon by letting 
her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the evening? 

Thus, then, of hterature as her help, and thus of art. 
There is one more help which we cannot do without— one 
which, alone, has sometimes done more than all other 
influences besides,— the help of wild and fair nature. Hear 
this of the education of Joan of Arc: 

'The education of this poor girl was mean according to 
the present standard; was ineffably grand, according to a 
purer philosophic standard; and only not good for our age, 
because for us it would be unattainable. * * * 

"Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to 
the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Dom- 
remy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was 
haunted to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest 
(cure) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order 
to keep them in any decent bounds. * * * 

"But the forests of Domremy— those were the glories of 
the land, for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient 
secrets that towered into tragic strength. 'Abbeys there 
were, and abbey windows,'— 4ike Moorish temples of the 
Hmdoos,' that exercised even princely power both in 
Touraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet 
bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins 
or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, 
and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree 
to disturb the deep soHtude of the region; yet many 



70 JOHN RUSKIN 



enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity- 
over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness."* 

Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England, woods 
eighteen miles deep to the centre; but you can, perhaps, 
keep a fairy or two for your children yet, if you wish to 
keep them. But do you wish it? Suppose you had each, 
at the back of your houses, a garden large enough for your 
children to play in, with just as much lawn as would give 
them room to run, — no more — and that you could not 
change your abode; but that, if you chose, you could 
double your income, or quadruple it, by digging a coal 
shaft in the middle of the lawn, and turning the flower-beds 
into heaps of coke. Would you do it? I think not. I can 
tell you, you would be wrong if you did, though it gave you 
income sixty-fold instead of four-fold. 

Yet this is what you are doing with all England. The 
whole country is but a little garden, not more than enough 
for your children to run on the lawns of, if you would let 
them all run there. And this little garden you will turn 
into furnace-ground, and fill with heaps of cinders, if you 
can; and those children of yours, not you, will suffer for it. 
For the fairies will not be all banished; there are fairies 
of the furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts seem to 
be ''sharp arrows of the mighty;" but their last gifts are 
"coals of juniper.". 

And yet I cannot — though there is no part of my subject 

that I feel more — press this upon you; for we made so Httle 

use of the power of nature while we had it that we shall 

hardly feel what we have lost. Just on the other side of 

the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and your Menai 

Straits, and that mighty granite rock beyond the moors of 

Anglesea, splendid in its heatherly crest, and foot planted 

in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred — a divine 

* "Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet's History of France.". 
De Quincey's Works. Vol. iii. p. 217. 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 71 

promontory, looking westward; the Holy Head or Head- 
land, still not without awe when its red light glares first 
through storm. These are the hills, and these the bays and 
blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would have been 
always loved, always fateful in influence on the national 
mind. That Snowdon is your Parnassus; but where are 
its Muses? That Holyhead mountain is your Island of 
iEgina, but where is its Temple to Minerva? 

Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva had 
achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus, up to the year 
1848? — Here is a httle account of a Welsh School, from 
page 261 of the report on Wales, pubHshed by the Commit- 
tee of Council on Education. This is a School close to a 
town containing 5,000 persons: — 

*'I then called up a larger class, most of whom had 
recently come to the school. Three girls repeatedly 
declared they had never heard of Christ, and two that 
they had never heard of God. Two out of six thought 
Christ was on earth now ('they might have had a worse 
thought, perhaps') ; three knew nothing about the cruci- 
fixion. Four out of seven did not know the names of the 
months, nor the number of days in a year. They had no 
notion of addition beyond two and two, or three and 
three; their minds were perfect blanks.'! 

Oh, ye women of England! from the Princess of that 
Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your own children 
can be brought into their true fold of rest while these are 
scattered on the hills, as sheep having no shepherd. And 
do not think your daughters can be trained to the truth of 
their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which 
God made at once for their school-room and their play- 
ground. He desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize 
them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you 
baptize them also in the sweet waters which the great 



72 JOHN RUSKIN 



Lawgiver strikes forth forever from the rocks of your 
native land — waters which a Pagan would have worshipped 
in their purity, and you only worship with pollution. 
You cannot lead your children faithfully to those narrow 
axe-hewn church altars of yours, while the dark azure 
altars in heaven — the mountains that sustain your island 
throne, — mountains on which a Pagan would have seen the 
powers of heaven rest in every wreathed cloud — remain 
for you without inscription; altars built, not to, but by, 
an Unknown God. 

III. Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of the teach- 
ing, of woman, and thus of her household office, and queen- 
liness. We come now to our last, our widest question, — 
What is her queenly office with respect to the state? 

Generally we are under an impression that a man's duties 
are public, and a woman's private. But this is not alto- 
gether so. A man has a personal work or duty relating to 
his own home, and a pubHc work or duty, which is the 
expansion of the other, relating to the state. So a woman 
has a personal work and duty, relating to her own home, 
and a pubhc work and duty, which is also the expansion 
of that. 

Now the man's work for his own home is, as hc.s been 
said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defence; the 
woman's to secure its order, comfort and loveliness. 

Expand both these functions. The man's duty, as a 
member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, 
in the advance, in the defence of the state. The woman's 
duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the 
ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment 
of the state. 

What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need 
be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a 
more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 73 

leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his 
more incumbent work there. 

^ And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her 
gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and the 
mirror of beauty; that she is also to be without her gates, 
where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, 
lovehness more rare. - 

And as within the human heart there is always set an 
instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct which you cannot 
quench, but only warp and corrupt if you withdraw it 
from its true purpose; — as there is the intense instinct of 
love, which, rightly discipHned, maintains all the sanctities 
of life and, misdirected, undermines them; and must do 
either the one or the other; so there is in the human heart 
an inextinguishable instinct, the love of power, which, 
rightly directed, maintains all the majesty of law and life, 
and misdirected, wrecks them. 

Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of man, 
and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and God keeps 
it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke the 
desire of power! — For Heaven's sake, and for Man's sake, 
desire it all you can. But what power? That is all the 
question. Power to destroy? the lion's limb, and the 
dragon's breath? Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, 
to guide and to guard. Power of the sceptre and 
shield; the power of the royal hand that heals in 
touching, — that binds the fiend and looses the captive; 
the throne that is founded on the rock of Justice, and de- 
scended from only by steps of mercy. Will you not covet 
such power as this, and seek such a throne as this, and be 
no more housewives, but queens? 

It is now long since the women of England arrogated, 
universally, a title which once belonged to nobihty only, 
and having once been in the habit of accepting the simple 
title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of gentleman, 



74 JOHN RUSKIN 



insisted on the privilege of assuming the title of "Lady/'* 
which properly corresponds only to the title of '' Lord.'! 

I do not blame them for this ; but only for their narrow 
motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the 
title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely the title, 
but the office and duty signified by it. Lady means 
"bread-giver" or "loaf-giver," and Lord means "main- 
tainer of laws," and both titles have reference, not to the 
law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread 
which is given to the household; but to law maintained 
for the multitude, and to bread broken among the multi- 
tude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to his title in so 
far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of 
Lord's ; and a Lady has legal claim to her title, only so far 
as she communicates that help to the poor representatives 
of her Master, which women once, ministering to Him of 
their substance, were permitted to extend to that Master 
Himself; and when she is known, as He Himself once was, 
in breaking of bread. 

And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power of 
the Dominus, or House Lord, and of the Domina, or House- 
Lady, is great and venerable, not in the number of those 
through whom it has lineally descended, but in the number 
of those whom it grasps within its sway; it is always 
regarded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty is 
founded on its duty, and its ambition corelative with its 
beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with the thought of 
being noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be it so: you 
cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be too great; 

* I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English 
youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a 
given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title; attainable only 
by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment; 
and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers of any dishonourable 
act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, 
possible, in a nation which loved honour. That it would not be possible 
among us is not to the discredit of the scheme. 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 75 

but see to it that your train is of vassals whom you serve 
and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed you; 
and that the multitude which obeys you is of those whom 
you have comforted, not oppressed, — whom you have 
redeemed, not led into captivity.^ 

And this, which is true of the lower or household domin- 
ion, is equally true of the queenly dominion ; — that highest 
dignity is open to you, if you will also accept that highest 
duty. Rex et Regina — Roi et Reine — ^^Right-&oQm'y. they 
differ but from the Lady and Lord, in that their power 
is supreme over the mind as over the person — that they 
not only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. Ajid 
whether consciously or not, you must be, in many a heart, 
enthroned: there is no putting by that crown; queens 
you must always be ; queens to your lovers ; queens to your 
husbands and your sons ; queens of higher mystery to the 
world beyond, which bows itself, and will for ever bow, before 
the myrtle crown, and the stainless sceptre, of womanhood. 
But, alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, 
grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate 
it in the greatest; and leaving misrule and violence to 
work their will among men, in defiance of the power, which, 
holding straight in gift from the Prince of all Peace, the 
wicked among you betray, and the good forget. 

'Trince of Peace." Note that name. When kings rule 
in that name, and nobles, and the judges of the earth, they 
also, in their narrow place, and mortal measure, receive 
the power of it. There are no other rulers than they: 
other rule than theirs is but misrule ; they who govern verily 
''Dei gratia" are all princes, yes, or princesses, of peace. 
There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but 
you women are answerable for it; not in that you have 
provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men, by 
their nature, are prone to fight; they will fight for any 
cause, or for none. ' It is for you to choose their cause for 



76 JOHN RUSKIN 



them, and to forbid them when there is no cause. ^ There 
is no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but the 
guilt of it Hes lastly with you. Men can bear the sight of it, 
but you should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it 
down without sympathy in their own struggle; but men 
are feeble in sympathy, and contracted in hope; it is you 
only who can feel the depths of pain ; and conceive the way 
of its heahng. Instead of trying to do this, you turn away 
from it; you shut yourselves within your park walls and 
garden gates; and you are content to know that there is 
beyond them a whole world in wilderness — a world of secrets 
which you dare not penetrate ; and of suffering which you 
dare not conceive. 

I tell you that this is to me quite the most amazing among 
the phenomena of humanity. I am surprised at no depths 
to which, when once warped from its honor, that humanity 
can be degraded. I do not wonder at the miser's death, 
with his hands, as they relax, dropping gold. I do not 
wonder at the sensualist's life, with the shroud wrapped 
about his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed 
murder of a single victim, done by the assassin in the dark- 
ness of the railway, or reed-shadow of the marsh. I do 
not even wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multi- 
tudes, done boastfully in the dayhght, by the frenzy of 
nations, and the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt, heaped 
up from hell to heaven, of their priests, and kings. But 
this is wonderful to me — oh, how wonderful! — to see the 
tender and dehcate woman among you, with her child at 
her breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over it, and 
over its father, purer than the air of heaven, and stronger 
than the seas of earth — nay, a magnitude of blessing which 
her husband would not part with for all that earth itself, 
though it were made of one entire and perfect chrysoUte: — 
to see her abdicate this majesty to play at precedence 
with her next-door neighbor! This is wonderful — oh, 



LILIES OF THE QUEENS' GARDENS 77 

wonderful! — to see her, with every innocent feehng fresh 
within her, go out in the morning into her garden to play 
with the fringes of its guarded flowers, and hft their heads 
when they are drooping, with her happy smile upon her 
face, and no cloud upon her brow, because there is a little 
wall around her place of peace: and yet she knows, in her 
heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, that, out- 
side of that Httle rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the 
horizon, is torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by 
the drift of their life-blood. 

Have you ever considered what a deep under meaning 
there lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our cus- 
tom of strewing flowers before those whom we think most 
happy? Do you suppose it is merely to deceive them into 
the hope that happiness is always to fall thus in showers at 
their feet? — that wherever they pass they will tread on 
herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground will be made 
smooth for them by depth of roses? So surely as they 
beheve that, they will have, instead, to walk on bitter 
herbs and thorns; and the only softness to their feet will 
be of snow. But it is not thus intended they should 
believe; there is a better meaning in that old custom, 
i The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers : 
but they rise behind her steps, not before them. ''Her 
feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies rosy." 
You think that only a lover's fancy; — false and vain! 
How if it could be true? You think this also, perhaps, 
only a poet's fancy — 

''Even the light harebell raised its head 
Elastic from her airy tread." 

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not 
destroy where she passes. She should revive; the harebells 
should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think I am 
going into wild hyperbole? Pardon me, not a whit — I 



78 JOHN RUSKIN 



mean what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute truth. 
You have heard it said — (and I beUeve there is more than 
fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) 
— that flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of some one 
who loves them. I know you would like that to be true; 
you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush 
your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon 
them: nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to 
cheer, but to guard them — if you could bid the black 
bUght turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare — if 
you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, and 
say to the south wind, in frost — ''Come, thou south, and 
breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow 
out." This you would think a great thing? And do you 
think it not a greater thing, that all this (and how much 
more than this!) you can do, for fairer flowers than these — 
flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and 
will love you for having loved them; — flowers that have 
eyes like yours, and thoughts like yours, and lives 
like yours; which, once saved, you save for ever? Is 
this only a little power? Far among the moorlands and 
the rocks, — far in the darkness of the terrible streets, — 
these feeble florets are lying, with all their fresh leaves 
torn, and their stems broken — will you never go down to 
them, nor set them in order in their Uttle fragrant beds, 
nor fence them in their shuddering from the fierce wind? 
Shall morning follow morning, for you, but not for them; 
and the dawn rise to watch, far away, those frantic Dances 
of Death;* but no dawn rise to breathe upon these Hving 
banks of wild violet, and woodbine, and rose; nor call to 
you, through your casement, — call, (not giving you the 
name of the English poet's lady, but the name of Dante's 
great Matilda, who on the edge of happy Lethe, stood, 
wreathing flowers with flowers,) saying: — 

* See note, p. 57. 



LILIES OP THE QUEENS' GARDENS 79 

"Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown, 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad 
And the musk of the roses blown?'! 

Will you not go down among them? — among those sweet 
living things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth 
with the deep colour of heaven upon it, is starting up in 
strength of goodly spire; and whose purity, washed from 
the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of promise; 
— and still they turn to you, and for you, 'The Larkspur 
listens — I hear, I hear! And the Lily whispers — I wait.'' 

Did you notice that I missed two Hues when I read you 
that first stanza; and think that I had forgotten them? 
Hear them now : — 

"Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown; 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate, alone." 

Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this 
sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you? Did you ever hear, 
not of a Maude, but a Madeleine, who went down to her 
garden in the dawn, and found one waiting at the gate, 
whom she supposed to be the gardener? Have you not 
sought Him often; — sought Him in vain, all through the 
night ; — sought Him in vain at the gate of that old garden 
where the fiery sword is set? He is never there ; but at the 
gate of this garden He is waiting always — waiting to take 
your hand — ready to go down to see the fruits of the valley, 
to see whether the vine has flourished, and the pomegranate 
budded. There you shall see with Him the httle tendrils 
of the vines that His hand is guiding — there you shall see 
the pomegranate springing where His hand cast the san- 
guine seed; — more: you shall see the troops of the angel 
keepers, that, with their wings, wave away the hungry 
birds from the pathsides where He has sown, and call to 



80 JOHN RUSKIN 



each other between the vineyard rows, 'Take us the foxes, 
the Httle foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines have 
tender grapes." Oh — you queens — you queens! among 
the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours, shall 
the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; 
and in your cities, shall the stones cry out against you, 
that they are the only pillows where the Son of Man can 
lay His head? 



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